Emmanuel Macron, President of France
ANKARA, Oct 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Calls to boycott French goods have gained momentum in Muslim countries in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s support for cartoons depicting Islam’s prophet Mohammed.
France “will not give up our cartoons,” Macron said after French teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in a suburb outside Paris earlier this month for showing cartoons of Mohammed in a class on freedom of expression.
On Friday, the cartoons were projected onto government buildings in France, sparking an outcry in the Arab world.
Calls to boycott French products and hashtags defending Mohammed have gone viral on social media.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned Turkish citizens against buying French goods, amid growing calls across the Muslim world for a boycott.
His remarks on Monday widened a rift between Turkey and France.
“I call on my people here. Never give credit to French-labelled goods, don’t buy them,” Erdogan said in a televised speech in Ankara, TRT reported.
Muslims are threatening a boycott over French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech earlier this month, in which he claimed Islam was a religion in crisis across the world. Many are also angry about the level of support in France for caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
While those in France say the caricatures should be allowed as a matter of free speech, Muslims find the images deeply offensive as they link Islam to “terrorism”, and as any depiction of the prophet is forbidden in Islam.
Decrying rising Islamophobia in Europe, Erdogan said hostility towards Islam and Muslims has become state policy in some European countries.
Addressing world leaders, he said: “If there is persecution in France, let’s protect Muslims together.
“European politicians should say ‘stop’ to the hate campaign led by French President Macron.”
In Egypt, users mocked Macron by depicting him as a dog in social media posts. They have shared a list of French brands such as carmakers Peugeot and Renault, and well-known dairy names Kiri, Babybel and Danone, calling for people to boycott them.
In Kuwait, 50 cooperative societies announced they have removed all French products from their branches in the Gulf state, according to the al-Qabas news website.
In Qatar, shops are also reported to have removed French products from their shelves.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned the “practice of running satirical caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad,” calling it “harmful to Muslim-French relations.”
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry also criticized the “continued publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, under the pretext of freedom of expression.”
Morocco’s Foreign Ministry echoed the remarks, “vigorously” condemning the continued publication of the “outrageous cartoons.”
“Freedom of expression cannot, under any circumstance, justify insulting … the Muslim religion, which has more than two billion believers worldwide,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that it condemned all violence carried out in the name of Islam.
Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s influential seat of learning, has also denounced the cartoons.
Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the grand imam of the Cairo-based Al-Azhar, said in a statement that the attack on Mohammed was part of a systematic campaign to use Islam to win political battles.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter that Muslims are “the primary victims of the ‘cult of hatred’”.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said Macron “could have put healing touch and denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarisation and marginalisation that inevitably leads to radicalisation”.
— NNN-AGENCIES
